


Only Seventeen

by likeromeoandjuliet



Series: Like a Folk Song [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, F/M, High School, Secret Relationship, Summer Love, They don’t know anything, They’re cute but dramatic and little shits cause they’re seven teen, and a few others - Freeform, cardigan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:01:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25559242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeromeoandjuliet/pseuds/likeromeoandjuliet
Summary: He’s with her in her car, they’re safely hidden away in a spot, up the hill on the Southside. At least like this, no one she knows will see. No one will see anything really, no one comes up much. His hands are gripping her hips, he’s inside her, he’s everywhere and she feels it, whatever this need for him is, it just intensifies every time they’re together, like he’s always known her body.They’re seventeen. They don’t know anything. It’s not supposed to be this good, she’s told. But they are. And even the first time robbed a bit of her soul, in the Blue and Gold, the desk would forever be marked with memories now.But his lips are on her neck, she’s bouncing on top of him, it feels dirty and enticing to be in a car overlooking the city, fucking him. The sound of skin on skin, the sweatiness, the heat. Their secret little rendezvous that always left her wanting more. That always imprinted the memory of his lips on hers, on her body. The secret is sexy, it’s a detour from the good girl facade she has to keep up.They sit quietly afterwards, the sun is setting, Jughead’s phone is plugged into the car, there’s a song playing that she doesn’t know, but likes enough to sit in silence, listening with him.
Relationships: Betty Cooper & Jughead Jones, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: Like a Folk Song [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1932334
Comments: 56
Kudos: 197
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	1. I Was Your Favorite

‘ _And when I felt like I was an old cardigan,_

_under someone’s bed,_

_You put me on and said I was your favorite.”_

**_Cardigan, Taylor Swift_ **

With the arrival of Summer, the trailer becomes a living inferno. The walls almost feel like a burn when you touch them, the metal older than he is, rusty in places he thinks wouldn’t be considered safe. It feels suffocating, watching his father passed out on the couch with the empty bottles on the old coffee table that reminds him of his mother. He remembers her anger, cleaning bottles, a strange dejavu, throwing them in a plastic bag, the glass breaking inside. He remembers the screaming, the fear he felt when the slurred words of his father would ring out through the trailer as he tried to play and distract his sister. The threats of his mother. No barbie dolls ever worked.

_ “ I’ll leave, I swear to god, I’ll fucking leave you.” _

She always forgot to add she wouldn’t take her son. 

Nowadays, he spent more time away from Sunnyside than he ever did before. A week into summer break and he loathes the heat, mourns the loss of a routine. It meant he never saw his father. Now he has to find places to go as to not see him. To avoid the screams. Maybe it really was his fault for being born. Why would he be the reason for their happiness? If anything, he added to the misery. 

Mrs. Dalloway offers him a smile when he enters the library. A little piece of a paradise in the middle of the heat. The air conditioning is old and noisy and sooner or later, he’ll have to cautiously advise Mrs. Dalloway that it needs to be replaced, but he guesses it’ll last the summer. Enough for this summer. Hopefully next summer, he’ll be long gone, maybe a scholarship will let him out of this godforsaken town, and he can live in a real building with no memories. 

Betty sits by the window. She’s the other regular at the library this summer. He finds it odd he’s never seen her here any previous summers, or perhaps noticed. She’s pretty. He knows she’s pretty, she’s literally every guy’s high school crush but she’s smart too, smarter than him, he supposes. Valedictorian material. They’re tied, he thinks. Maybe if he took up a sport, he’d get the extra credit to surpass her but he’s too lazy and much too proud to admit his physical shape isn’t exactly up to par, and he will perpetually argue that sports and that competitiveness are toxic and he’s not about to give into peer pressure. 

“Jughead?” 

She smiles at him from across the room. And he doesn’t know what he did to deserve that kind of smile. Starting up The Blue and Gold, the school newspaper, this year with her, led to a fateful late afternoon as he hovered over her with ideas for the article and she just leaned up and kissed him, as he wished he had done before. And so with a kiss, their secret escape began. 

“Hey.” He greets when he gets to her. The light from the summer sun outside the window makes her green eyes a little brighter. Maybe he doesn’t hate summer that much. “What are you reading?” He eyes the cover, furrowing his brows with a laugh. “’Mechanical Ignition Handbook? Really?”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“Gee, I wonder what your mother says about that.” He jokes but there’s a shift in her radiant smile. “Sorry.” He offer right as he notices. As guarded as they’d been around each other, he knew her mother was an absolute aberration of a woman, who should’ve never been allowed to have children in the first place and Betty’s beautiful smile usually got bulldozed over the mention of her. 

“It’s okay.” She shrugs, but it’s really not. He never knows which line to cross with her. What’s real and what’s not, what they are. It confuses him to an extent he was never really ready for. “How are you taking the heat?” She smirks at him and the tension drops as she changes the subject. 

“It’s hellish, I hate it, I want winter back.” He grumbles and she smiles fondly. He likes to think he’s more than whatever they are to her but he never knows. “I just want nice jackets. Fucking feel like not even nakedness helps.” 

“Wanna test that theory?” 

•

He’s with her in her car, they’re safely hidden away in a spot, up the hill on the Southside. At least like this, no one she knows will see. No one will see anything really, no one comes up much. His hands are gripping her hips, he’s inside her, he’s everywhere and she feels it, whatever this need for him is, it just intensifies every time they’re together, like he’s always known her body. 

They’re seventeen. They don’t know anything. It’s not supposed to be good, she’s told. But they are. And even the first time was great, in the Blue and Gold, the desk would forever be marked with memories now. 

But his lips are on her neck, she’s bouncing on top of him, it feels dirty and enticing to be in a car overlooking the city, fucking. The sound of skin on skin, the sweatiness, the heat. Their secret little rendezvous that always left her wanting more. That always imprinted the memory of his lips on hers, on her body. The secret is sexy, it’s a detour from the good girl facade she has to keep up. 

They sit quietly afterwards, the sun is setting, Jughead’s phone is plugged into the car, there’s a song playing that she doesn’t know, but likes it enough to sit in silence with him. 

The songs fades out, he’s looking at her. Perhaps asking...will I always be your secret? 

She doesn’t know. Her mother would send her to a convent probably, dating a Southside kid with a badmouth and a leather jacket, but who is the absolute sweetest thing she’s ever seen, would make her mom throw a fit, probably slap her across her face, lock her in the basement. Her friends...they would be dicks about it. Dating the social outcast of Riverdale High, while being in the “popular” group, the group everybody wanted to be in. “ What is this? Charity? You’re helping the needy?” “Probably a serpent.”  She doesn’t want to spend the rest of the year being tortured by them. All she wants is to get through the year and forget they even exist. Jughead doesn’t deserve the hell that would thrown on him if people found out, he had enough as it is. 

He lights a cigarette in his mouth. She doesn’t want to romanticize the action of something that will likely cause him breathing problems and cancer and the object that is just death on a stick, although, his endurance still seems fine, she reasons. But he looks hot when he blows the smoke out of his lips and she realizes it’s nothing short of the cliche he’s supposed to be. She’s astounded by the fact that no one at Riverdale High seems to notice him. But remembers that he, himself, has never felt confident enough to be what he is with her. If they knew what he did to her, girls would be falling at his feet. 

“Can I ask a question?” She murmurs, looking at him. He nods his head, lazy smile on his lips. “Why do you smoke?” 

“Bad decision I can’t quit?” 

“How did you start?” 

He laughs softly. “I stole my dad’s cigarettes when I was like thirteen and me and a couple other kids went to Sunnyside’s playground late at night and just tried it out. Then I kept at it cause I thought it was cool.” 

She smirks. “Thought you were against all societal pressures.” 

With a laugh, he turns to her. “My brain was not yet developed to that point at thirteen, Betts.” 

_Betts. Jesus._ That does things to her. No one calls her that.  But he does and it’s a dangerous thing to feel this way. If he has his cigarettes, then she has him as her addiction. The secret she keeps, the one nobody knows about. The guilt about it creeps up at times, but he makes her forget, most times.

“Your parents know?” 

He stiffens and she immediately regrets mentioning it, especially with his answer. “They don’t care. Never have.” 

“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to ask the wrong thing.” 

“No. It’s okay.” His hand travels to her bare knee, a shiver curses through her body. Reaching for his face, she presses her lips to his, a means to forget the topic of before. 

“My mom is gonna be out of town next weekend.” She asks when she pulls away. 

“Is that an invitation?” He breathes out. 

“A chance to do this in a real bed for once, wouldn’t you want it?” She pecks his lips with a grin. 

•

His father isn’t at the trailer when he gets there. It’s past eleven, he would have guessed he’d already be passed out, but he isn’t. Instead there’s a note on the fridge that says: ‘ out on a job. Be back in a week.’.  He’s given up on asking what the job is. Probably something to do with the serpents, something that he wants nothing to do with. So he’s alone for the week. 

Betty texts him a picture of the sunset of just an hour before. She had lied to her mother, saying she’d been at Veronica’s and not with him. It’s usually her default answer to her mother whenever they lose track of time together. And they had, on the hood of her car,watching the sunset in each other’s arms. 

He doesn’t really know what that sunset means. Maybe it’s just pretty and she likes showing him pretty things. Or maybe it’s something more, something more telling. Like she watched that beautiful thing with him and it meant something. Sometimes it feels bigger, bigger than whatever it is they’re doing, more than what he’s felt with anyone when they’re together. And other times, it’s just what it is. They talk about movies and music and poetry and she shows him things he’d overlooked and he’s blown away by her but it doesn’t feel like he really knows her. Like she’s let him in. He can’t blame her, she doesn’t know much about him either. 

On a whim, he calls her, alone on the couch in the trailer, staring at the TV.

“Hello?” 

“Hi. Why do you sound so surprised?” 

She laughs softly. “It’s not like you to call like this.” 

“Like what?” 

“At this hour, after we were together.” 

“Maybe the heat really is affecting me.” He jokes. 

“Maybe.” He can hear a smile on her voice. “Why did you call though?” 

“Wanna watch a movie?” 

There’s a pause. “You mean...like a date? In public?” There’s a waver in her words, because of course not in public, because they’re her secret and she doesn’t want anyone to know about them. Sometimes he wishes it were normal but he’ll take what he can get. 

“No! No, I mean on Netflix, maybe if you stay on or turn on FaceTime or something we can watch something together?” 

“Oh...” 

“What?” 

“Nothing, just we’ve never done that before...” 

“Right, sorry, that was dumb-“ 

“No! I didn’t say it was bad, just unexpected, I guess.” 

“You’re not the only one with surprises, Betts.” 

She laughs softly. “I know.” 

They settle on The Shining. Betty loves the movie, he does too, not his favorite Kubrick film but he loves it. He wishes he was holding her. 

“If we were on a date, would you seduce me in the jump scares?” He jokes, turning to the camera. 

Betty snorts. “Never. Please, I have other weapons other than being a little bitch and not looking at horror movies.” She tells him with the same fire in her eyes that always entices him. “If we were on a date, I’d do just what we’re doing now which is commenting on the fine piece of filmmaking this is.”

“No seducing me?” 

“I’d assume you know what happens at the end of the night.” 

“Your car?” 

She grins at the camera. 

It becomes a something they do. Have these so called online dates, it happens a few times a week and it’s a little more than what they were before, with more time on their hands, less actively hiding unless they were in the Blue and Gold, they talk more, they see each other more. 

“Hey?” 

“Mmmh?” 

He smiles. “You’re falling asleep. We can finish tomorrow.” 

Her eyes open and she looks at him, on her screen. “You look pretty.”

“I look pretty?” He laughs and she nods sleepily, the smile still on her lips. “Go to sleep, we can talk tomorrow.” 

“Stay with me?” 

“On the phone, you mean?” 

“Until I fall asleep?” 

“Okay.” He nods his head and he’s rapidly noticing that it’s hard to say no to her and that he’ll probably be sleepwalking tomorrow. It’ll be worth it. 

He doesn’t turn the camera off until morning. And realizes he wants more than she bargained for. 

•

The weekend comes and Betty picks him up at the bus stop with a grin on her face and a Pink Floyd T-shirt. He thinks this is her “mom isn’t in town” outfit. 

“I like the t-shirt.” He says, as he gets in the car, she laughs and he shuts the door. “I have the vinyl, you know? ‘Wish you were here’. Found it at the old drive in.” 

“I have it too. Bought it though. Can I tell you a secret?” She grins. 

“What?” 

“Always wanted to have sex with it in the background.” 

“Any song in particular?” He grins. 

“Shine on you crazy diamond obviously.” 

‘Shine on you crazy diamond’ is playing when he fucks her on a real bed for the first time. She is writhing under him, nails digging into his back as the guitar plays, as he moves back and forth. Their moans bounce off the walls. Their tempo is more accelerated but they play their song perfectly. 

_ You shone like the sun.  _

In the end, maybe that’s all they are, diamond in the rough trying to mold themselves into something better, something good. Hands, lips on her skin, she’s everything in that very moment. The green in her eyes, her mouth open, his name falling from her lips and onto his are the very foundation which the world must’ve been built upon. The beauty of it, the simplicity in a connection. 

Or maybe it was just the writer in him looking for things in places there are none. 

He lies belly down afterwards, as she lies with him, tracing patterns on his back. She’s smiling, she looks happy even as they lay sweaty and hot and a secret. 

“Since I’ve shared my sex song. What’s yours?” 

He laughs, opening his eyes to looks at her. “It’s...Since I’ve been Loving You.” 

“Led Zeppelin.” 

“That’s the one.” 

“So, I guess we’ve both got the hots for a nice guitar.” 

“I’ve got the hots for you, the guitar is just bonus in the background.” He grins and turns so his body is facing her. “This is nice.” He murmurs. 

She looks so beautiful, cheeks flushed, smile on her lips, here with him. His feelings might be getting a little out of control for his taste but he can’t stop. Like there’s something with her there never was with anyone else. A pull, a thread, a string tying him to her. Falling to his knees at every touch. 

“I like you.” With her fingers tracing his eyebrow, he wants to lock himself in this moment forever. 

“I like you too.” He whispers. 

•

She’s quiet, tracing her fingers across his skin, discovering his face in a way she hadn’t had the time to before. She wonders again how no girl notices him. His eyes, his lips, he’s beautiful. And she’s lucky she gets to see him like this, tanned skin, the scowl that seemed to be permanent to him gone, replaced with a soft smile. She wonders if it’s her or the sex that did it. Maybe a little of both. It’s been a beautiful weekend with him, days of discovering new parts of him. If his heart, of his body, of who they are together. She wishes it were like that everyday. They’re young. It shouldn’t feel so profound, what they have. She’s scared of how easy it’s been. From one kiss in the Blue and Gold to this. 

“Do you ever wish you could be someone else?” She asks quietly, not even stopping herself when the thought comes, feeling safe, with him. 

The questions seems to catch him off guard, but throws him deep into his thoughts. She watches the fleeting moments of his feelings on his face. The surprise at her question, the sadness that seems to radiate off of him whenever she really looks at him. 

“All the time.” He whispers in response. “Do you?” 

She hums. “I do. More than I should. I dream of being far away from here sometimes, starting over.” 

“Where?” 

For a second, she thinks and then smiles at him. “Paris.” 

He laughs softly. “Paris.” He muses. “Can I come with?” 

“Tell me our story.” 

“Our story?” 

“You’re a writer, Jug. What’s the story of us? In Paris, if you’re coming with?” She moves to to turn on his back so she can straddle him, the grin permanent on her face. He’s looking at her like she thinks all girls deserve to be looked at. Like he sees more in her than meets the eye, like he knows her soul, like this is just a body and he’s lived a hundred lifetimes with her. 

He’s looking at her when he begins the story. “We get a little place in some cute neighborhood, we see the Eiffel Tower through our bathroom window which is an unfortunate place but it was the only apartment we saw where you could actually see it and you wanted that. We have loads of books. And you always did say you wanted to learn to paint, so we find out that our upstairs neighbor is this old lady who was painter once so she teaches you.” It’s not lost on her that he remembers her mentioning it, she doesn’t even remember mentioning it. “Our apartment is suddenly filled with paintings right next to all the books. And I get moody and I write till four am and you’re annoyed. But I make it up to you.” 

She smiles. “How?” 

“Well, I wake you up, in the morning, it’s a Saturday and I make you breakfast and then I kiss you and worship every bit of you and we only wonder afterwards how loud we were.” 

“Jug, what will our neighbors think?” She gasps mockingly. 

“You don’t moan in French, so they don’t understand everything.” He huffs out a laugh as she kisses his lips and he flips them over. 

“What else?” 

“Mmmh, we take walks through Montparnasse. And we dream of the 20s. Hemingway, Picasso and Dalí and you tell me Dalí was an enormous piece of shit-“

“He really is! I swear-“

“I’m not finished.” He captures her lips in his. “We go on dates. No one knows who we are. And we can have dinner in little Parisian bistros and go to the movies and walk by the Seine and I can kiss you in the middle of the street.” 

His story makes her heart flutter. Her feelings for him had deepened throughout the summer, throughout the days they’ve spent together. With each day, she finds herself falling for him while cautiously maintaining a distance, but not being able to at all. He’s so intricately beautiful, like a mystery, clues in his words, in his kisses, in the intimacy of his gaze, in the way he touches her. How it doesn’t feel like sex, it feels deeper than just that. 

“I wanna take you on a date.” 

She gulps. “Jug-“  don’t do this. She doesn’t need the moment ruined. 

“Greendale. Who knows us there?” 

“No one. But I just-“ 

“Let’s be someone else.” Jughead says it with a smile and she thinks it’s probably the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to her. “You wanna dress differently? Play a character, anyone, anything for one night? No one will see us, I promise. You don’t have to worry about it.” He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “What do you say?” 

She sighs softly and he leans down to press a kiss to her lips. “Okay.” He grins up at her. “A date.” 

•

He has one button up shirt that sits untouched in his closet. The purchase, made by him, had been made for the special occasion of going to Toledo to visit Jellybean on her birthday. It hadn’t happened, the visit, and the shirt had been tainted with bad memories. He wanted to look different, look right, maybe then...maybe his mother would see more of him. Not for what he was but what he could be. 

But tonight, tonight it’d be different. Tonight he’d dress nicely for her. Tonight he wasn’t what this earth made him to be, he wasn’t his father’s son. He was just a guy on a date with a beautiful girl. Nothing else mattered. 

Betty’s mother thinks she’s staying the night at Veronica’s. He sets aside the sting of the length she goes to keep him a secret, to keep them a secret. But it’s a dangerous thread, he doesn’t want to give her up. With each moment that passes, he feels her cement herself in him and it’s getting harder and harder to let go. 

She walks to Pop’s by herself and he picks her up down the street, on his bike. She’s wearing a green summer dress, the color brings out her eyes, flowing down her body, a perfect image of what brings him peace, all her. Beautiful, simple, elegant. She is the most ethereal girl there ever was. 

Like vision out of a film, she walks up to his bike, smile on her lips and his whole heart in her hands. “Don’t you look handsome?” 

He smiles softly and then pushes himself off the bike to meet her halfway. “No one’s here. Can I kiss you?” 

“By all means.” She murmurs. So he does, he places his hands on both sides of her waist and brings her close, breath on her lips as he waits a second to brush his lips against hers. Then he kisses her and he tries to give her everything in a kiss. When air becomes a priority, they pulls away, foreheads joined together. “What was that?” 

“Just...you look breathtaking.” 

She smiles. “Aren’t you the romantic?” 

“Only for you.” 

He’d always treasure her arms around him when they ride to Greendale, the freedom of it all. The speed, her touch, the empty road. And then them walking down the street to a restaurant, holding hands. He wishes they could be these people forever, for this summer and every summer to come. It’s been so little time and yet, he thinks he loves her. Maybe this is love, the feeling, the rush he feels with her. More than just sex, more than just a girl, maybe his. 

They laugh together during dinner and they few happy. They split the bill and Jughead uses his fake ID for the first time to order wine for them. Neither of them have ever really liked wine but it feels like a proper date. They feel older, in a version of a future. Somewhere in the multiverse, there they are, together, still happy but older, somewhere different. Maybe Paris, maybe anywhere. But he likes to think he’d see her there. 

They’re buzzed under streetlights, kissing in the middle of the street, dancing together by a violinist busking in the street and he feels happy, with her. 

“We’re really something, aren’t we?” She says when they’re walking back to the bike. 

“You think so?” He questions softly. There’s always the doubt that she doesn’t feel the same way he does. 

She stops him, touching his arm to turn him towards her. “Jug...you know this is real, right? What we are? It’s not...small.” 

“Betts...”

“You make me feel things I’ve never felt with anyone, it’s like...I’m me, with you.” 

He places a hand on her cheek, with a softly. “I know.”  _ I love you.  _


	2. When You Are Young

_‘I’m a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm_   
  
_If your cascade, ocean wave blues come_

_All these people think love's for show_

_But I would die for you in secret’_

_**Peace, Taylor Swift** _

“Let’s go to yours.” 

The suggestion stops him in his tracks and he curses himself over not thinking this through. The trailer would be empty, his father had messaged him saying he was now unsure of when he would return. But that was just the thing, it was what it was. A trailer. 

“Betty...”

“What?” 

He runs a hand through his hair, silently praying the night isn’t ruined in a second. “You might not like it there.” He tells her. Something seems to click as to why. He doesn’t know if she’s ever even been to the Southside. 

“Jug...I don’t care, okay? I care about you and being with you. That’s enough.” 

“I don’t want you to think I’m like embarrassed. It’s part of who I am, I just...wantyou to be comfortable and safe. Southside is...different.” 

“I’m safe with you.” She tells him, squeezing his hand in hers. A beat passes, he’s staring at her and he’s never felt safe anywhere else, but he does with her. He feels so many things, so many good things. His whole life has been a series of tragic memories and fear. And here she is, making him feel true unadulterated happiness. 

Her arms are tight around him as they ride back to Riverdale. Passing the sign, welcoming them into their hometown, Jughead thinks he’s never felt more at home than with her. They venture into the Southside and the light seems to follow in line with it, getting darker, broken lamps, the lack of funding or care from the Mayor’s office clear with every mile they go. The scum of the earth only stay that way because the higher ups want them to. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer. At the end of the day, money matters, because he’s been freezing in the winter and hungry too many times before and all that would’ve made a difference was the dollar sign at the end of the month.

“What was it like? To grow up here?” 

As they walk to the trailer, he glances at her. “That’s...a loaded question I’m not sure how to answer.” He turns the key in the door, the door makes the annoying screeching sound it always makes but this time, he’s with her and all he wants is for everything to be perfect, even in a trailer park, on the Southside, for a just a moment, he needs it to be perfect. “Et voilà...” He murmurs when he turns on the light, searching her face for her thoughts. “It’s-“

“Jug, stop, this is fine, I just want you.” Betty sighs softly, stepping closer to him. 

“Okay.” He breathes out. 

“In fact, I think you’re looking a bit too...dressed for my liking.” She smirks. 

“That so?” He challenge, as she pulls him closer. Not wasting another second, he presses his lips to hers, as she laughs against his mouth. She jumps to wrap her legs around his waist and he pulls back to look at her a second. 

“What?” 

I’d give you everything. Everything.

“Just wanted to look at you.” 

She grins. “I want you to fuck me.” 

“Don’t get too bossy there, Betts.” 

“Or what? Will you punish me?” There’s a devilish look on her face as she says it and he walks forward, with her in his arms, her back slamming into the kitchen cabinet, as he kisses her. He presses wet kisses down her neck down to her cleavage. “Fuck.” She breathes out. 

“Betty?” 

“What?” 

“You’re so fucking beautiful.” 

She laughs. “No need to charm me, Jug. Just take me to bed.”

He’s never been as glad to obey an order. 

•

Betty wishes things were different. She wishes her mother loved her, wishes that, in some way, every cruel word her mother had ever thrown her way could vanish from her memory. She wishes she could forget the sting of her mother’s hand on her cheek when she dared to respond to her. Her father’s face, stone faced, saying: “You should listen to your mother.” The threat of them not allowing her to go to college if she did anything wrong, if she dared to expose what happened inside the paper house they’d built. 

She wishes things were different because of him. In some parallel universe, he meets her parents and they have dinner and they’re happy, in the very simple way someone can be happy, a warm feeling in your chest, a quiet mind. In another universe, there is no pain in his heart, there’s no fear and their parents are good and kind and they have real families, that have movie nights and laugher worth every frown. 

“I tried calling her.” Jughead tells her, quietly, holding her. “She never picks up.” She doesn’t say anything else, waits for him to continue. He’s showing her his vulnerability, his deepest pain, right here, where he grew up, after a perfect night. He tells her about his father, about his drinking and the Serpents and how scared he is. His voice wavers and she holds him tighter, pressing a kiss to his bare chest. She doesn’t remember how the conversation started, but she feels like he’s showing her parts of himself she’s never seen before and she wants to give him everything, she wants to take his pain away. 

“I don’t want to end up like him.” He confesses and she can see the fear in his eyes, the streetlights outside, the dim orange color reflecting on his skin as they lie together. “Wasting away, in a trailer park. My grandfather was like him, he tried his hardest when he was my age not to be what he is and he just...couldn’t avoid it.” 

“No.” She breathes out. “You’re gonna get out of here and you’re gonna go to college and be a writer. You’re...gonna be more.” 

“How can you know?” 

“I know you. And I’ll drag you with me if I have to, I promise.” She says. “You’re not your father, just like I’m not my mother.” 

He stares at her a moment. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Yes.” 

“Does she...does she hit you?” 

She stills in his arms and he doesn’t need her to say the words aloud. Her mind thinks of all the times she’s felt the throbbing ache inflicted by her mother and shuts her eyes. 

“It’s never been too much, she just slaps me but it’s not like it’s too bad. There are so many people who have it worse than I do.” 

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry she ever laid a hand on you. You deserve so much, Betty. I wish I could give you everything you deserve. I wish I could give peace.” There’s anguish in his eyes, like he’s helpless he can’t do more to help her. And she knows the feeling it’s the same one she feels. 

“You do.” She argues. “Every day I’m with you, it’s like everything else isn’t real but we are. You bring me more peace than you know, Jug. It’s like I know who I am with you and when I leave, I have to be someone else.” 

“Betts...” 

“Yeah?” 

“I think I might love you.” 

Her heart skips a beat but she’s known for longer that this isn’t just a simple thing between them, that it’s much more complex than they could ever understand at that moment. 

Soulmates. Maybe soulmates. Maybe just people. Maybe just young lovers finding themselves in someone else, learning to love even the darkest parts of the other. 

“I think I might love you too.” 

•

He starts working at the Bijou when his father hasn’t returned and he needs the money to pay the bills. It’s happened before. But this time, his father is really taking the prize for shitty father, maybe this time he’s left for good. Maybe he’s dead in a ditch somewhere, a drunken night finally doing the deed, falling into the depths of his rotten soul forever, never to be found again. But he hasn’t come back. 

The bright side of everything is that he sneaks Betty in and in every session when no one is around, they kiss in the projection booth, whispering the newfound word in their vocabulary, hearts racing, as Casablanca plays on the screen. 

“Here’s looking at you, kid.” He murmurs when the night ends and they’re still there. 

He locks the image of her smile in a locked box in his mind. 

He loves her, certain as the sunrise. The lingering feeling inside him almost hurts. It’s as strong as the pain he’s always felt, every step of his life and he doesn’t quite know what to do with it all. It feels greater than most things and he begins to question how he ever lived without feeling so much. What has he been doing, numbed, walking through life without really living. But with her, he’s alive. When she smiles, his insides ignite and he’s sure it’s something he’ll never forget. When her lips touch his, there’s dreamscapes he’s never though he could image playing in his mind, entire world built with her. 

The question haunts him though, as much as he wants to live in the now, as much as he loves her. How long do they have? How much longer can their little bubble of happiness hold them in? 

Other times, he misses her because she’s with her friends. He’ll bite his tongue about them because he knows it isn’t her choice, it’s her mother, it’s always her mother and to some degree, he fully understands that. But he also remembers one of her friends throwing him against a locker and him fighting back, he thinks back to the insults. If he wasn’t smart enough, he might’ve let them destroy him, be bullied into nothingness. But he fought back. He never understood, even before loving Betty, why she was friends with them. Now he does. 

It doesn’t make it any better. He knows what they think of him and Betty’s there, right there listening to them as they shit talk everyone, as they hurt the people they deem inferior to them. 

But he loves her. And she loves him. Maybe that could be enough for now. 

“Jug?” 

Her voice detracts him from his thoughts. They’re in her house, her parents are somewhere in Greendale. It’s hot outside but it’s cool in her bedroom. Must be nice to have all this. 

“What are you thinking about?” 

He sighs softly, running a finger up and down her back. “You have a really nice house.” 

“That’s it?” She laughs. “My house?” 

“It reminds of the difference.” 

“The difference?” Her brows furrow. 

“Come on, you know...all this.” He gestures vaguely around the room. “It’s nice. I’ve never had that. Something nice. A real house.” He shrugs. “Money. What keeps the world moving.” 

“None of this gave me what I really needed.” 

He furrows his eyes, shaking his head. “It’s not about that.” 

“What?” 

“You wouldn’t get it.”

“What do you mean?” 

“We’re not that different, you and I. We’ve both got shitty parents and shitty home lives. But you’ve always had a roof over your head and you never worried if you were going to eat the next day, you know? It’s different for me.” He explains quietly. The apprehension is clear on her face, like she’s realizing something she’s never thought of before. 

“Does that...change this? What we are to each other?” She questions, her voice trembling. 

“Southside, Northside. It’s the reason I’m a secret isn’t it? Because I’m from the Southside? Because of what that means to your family?” 

Betty stares at him a second, there’s a lump in her throat. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s ok.”

It’s really not. Because they’re different. And that’s the sole reason he can’t love her out in the world. 

•

Veronica Lodge is a spoiled rich princess. So is Cheryl Blossom. And Adam Chisholm. And Reggie Mantle. 

Betty knows this. Fuck. She knows this so well, but her mother would do more than slap her if she knew she cut off her relationship with the perfect little people they are, the influential people in Riverdale. Her mother needed the donations to keep the paper going, her father needed the good word with the Mayor. And they needed Betty to keep up a perfect image. Of the perfect friends and the perfect life. 

There’s expensive vodka bottles in their hands. Betty hasn’t had much, she’s had considerably less than the people around her. But they’re allshit faced and high. By Sweetwater River, there’s a loud speaker blaring songs Betty hates and Veronica and Cheryl are dancing while Reggie is shirtless, screaming stupid shit and she’s sat on the hood of Reggie’s car with Adam. 

Adam is staring at her. She hates it. “Loosen up, Cooper.”

“Not really in the mood.” She answers, taking a swig of the vodka. It’s bitter and it burns her throat but maybe time will pass quicker like this. 

“You know what we should do to make this fun?” Reggie’s got that asshole look on his face as always. “We should fuck some shit up. We’re in the Southside technically, no one’s gonna give a shit. Call it stress relief!” 

“Oh my god! You know what?! We’re close to that trashy trailer park!” Veronica squeals, Betty wants to throw up. 

“Guys! No! Why the fuck would we do that?” 

“Why? You too chicken shit, Bettykins?” Veronica grins at her. 

“I say we do it!” Cheryl calls out. “Don’t you have some spray paint, Reg? We should tell them who they are! Trailer trash!” 

“Jesus...” Betty breathes out. She feels nauseous, she feels drunk and all she can think about is Jughead and his words and his love and the people like her friends who prey on people like him. 

But she lets them drag her into the car, and they drive to Sunnyside, she’s dizzy when she stands up. The others are doing an awful job at keeping quiet, laughing. Reggie’s holding a can of spray paint and the first victim happens to be Jughead’s neighbor. 

TRAILER TRASH 

SERPENT SCUM 

Then his trailer is in front of them. 

“Guys! Let’s go before they see us! Please!” 

She can feel the lump her in her throat, tighter, tears threatening to spill as she watches them write those awful things on her boyfriend’s trailer, the boy she loves and yet she’s frozen to the ground. 

“We’re having fun, Betty! Quit being such a bitch!” Cheryl spats at her. 

It happens so fast. Fuck. She swears. It’s so fast. 

But he’s there. Cheryl is holding the spray paint. Veronica is laughing. And he bursts out of the trailer. 

“What the fuck?!” He yells.

“SOUTHSIDE TRASH!” Reggie yells as they start running, she lags behind, her eyes locked in his. 

“Jug...” She mumbles. Her vision is blurry but she sees the look in his eyes. He’s so hurt and she doesn’t know what to do. 

“Betty, hurry up!” 

She runs. She loves him but she runs. 

•

The next morning, she’s at Sunnyside, he’s cleaning the trailer, she’s already crying when he notices her there. 

“Jug!” She walks faster as he shakes his head. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” 

“Fuck’s sake, Betty...” He looks so defeated. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

“I was drunk. I tried to stop them, okay? I did, I swear, I tried!” She rambles, as he throws the sponge on the ground and the bucket, she grabs his face, crying. “Jug-“

He frees himself from her and walks inside the trailer, the door remains open is open so she follows him. He must hate her. He must hate her so much. 

“Jug, I don’t know what to say...I couldn’t. They were being stupid and I-“

“You went along with it.” He accuses her. “You said you loved me.”

“That’s not fair! I do! I love you!” 

“Not enough. You love me but you can’t even stop your friends from doing shit like this. Your friends. How the fuck can you be friends with people like that?!”

“I’ve told you why! I don’t know-“

“When are you going to understand that is not what they are?” He raises his voice, she sucks in her breath, she flinches. 

“Jug, please...” She begs. 

“They’re not! They’re just people who you don’t fucking like! Who you’re friends with for some kind of fucked up perfect image! It’s not fucking real! None of that shit is real, Betty! Friends don’t criticize your clothes and your life and the people you love! And people like you don’t befriend people like them! Vapid pieces of shit who couldn’t give two fucks if you were dead in a ditch! They’re nothing! You mean nothing to them!” 

Anger flares in her chest, it’s a mess of feelings inside of her and it doesn’t feel fair. He knows everything about her, about her heart, he should know this isn’t who she is, that she had no choice. “Who are you to say what people are? You’re against everyone and everything. Rebel without a fucking cause!” She’d called him James Dean once so maybe that still fits. “You’re angry at the world!” 

“Yeah, I am because I live in a fucking trailer because the world isn’t fair to people like me!” 

“It’s about that now, is it?! Southside/Northside?!” 

“Yeah and you wanna know why? Because I would never hide you here or anywhere for that matter but it’s a problem to you that I’m from the Southside! Cause you’re fucking embarrassed of me! Of the fact that you even love me! So you parade around with those people, thinking you fit right in! But that isn’t you!” 

“I’m not embarrassed of you, you know that. You have to know that. You need to understand, it’s not about that! Jug,” She pulls him to her, he tries to pull away but she holds him in place. “I love you. I love you.” 

He’s crying, the tears seem to come out of nowhere and he can’t hold this in because it hurts more than anything’s ever hurt. Because he loves her more than most things. But it’s not enough, maybe it would never be enough. 

“I don’t know how to be your secret anymore.” He breathes out. 

“No.” She shakes her head. “Jug-“ She sobs. 

“I- it’s too much.” 

“Don’t you love me? Why would you do this?” 

“Don’t.” He pulls away, she lets him. “I love you. But I can’t be your dirty little secret...I deserve more than that. You have no right to be angry at me for wanting more than this. More than having to take your friends’ shit.” 

She sits down on his couch, face in her hands. She feels exhausted and drained and none of this feels really fair. “I’m not gonna be here next month.” She tells him, quietly. 

“What?” 

“My mom is shipping me off to my grandmother’s.” 

“What do you want me to do with that?” He scoffs. “Go on then, figure yourself out.” 

“You’re being cruel.” 

“So are you.” He throws back at her. “Who were we kidding, Betty, this was never gonna work. Always thought it was too good to be true. What were you gonna do? Keep me a secret forever, hope no one finds out? Keep us inside closed doors while you parade around with the people who hate me just for who I am? That’s not love.” 

“What are you saying?” She asks, afraid of what the answer may be. 

“I just need time. I don’t- I need distance.” He breathes out. “Maybe that’ll do us both some good.” 

The silence feels suffocating and wrong, everything about this day and the day before feels wrong. With a snap of the universe’s fingers, here they were burning up in flames. All it took was one match and the fire was lit. Uncontrollable. He’s asking for things she can’t give him and doesn’t know what more to ask while she doesn’t know what she can give, what she’s willing to give at this moment in time. 

They’re so young, yet it’s like her heart’s been ripped out of her chest but maybe that’s the thing about youth. You feel more. Maybe adults get numb when they’re older and being young means a universe of every feeling imaginable inside of you, with supernovas and black holes and galaxies beginning and ending every star and every scar expanding and growing and appearing. 

It feels like the world is ending. Because it is. We don’t live life in one world only. There’s thousands of them, with every step we take and for a while, she thought she could’ve kept her worlds from colliding. 

But no world is completely still in its place. And they had just crashed. 

•

_ What am I to say to end of things?  _

_ There’s a silence to it. As if what you knew for those brief moments, those pockets of happiness, simply vanishes and it’s your doing. You question what you could’ve done differently and yet you accept the inevitability of things seizing to exist.  _

_ But there’s a silence. And you realize it’s her absence. The low hum of happiness is replaced by the thin sound ringing in your ears after the explosion. There’s no buzz on your phone with messages of love and little nothings that mean the world. There is no beat of her heart in the still of night and no melodic laughter for you to fall in love more. There is no quietness in that silence, no serenity like the serenity you felt when you were quiet with her.  _

_ You’re alone again. Your father hasn’t returned. You feel defeated. You feel hallow.  _

_ And there’s the anger. What had she said? ‘You’re angry at the world.’ Yes, you are. You’re angry at her for not loving you enough to want you in every shape way or form. Because secrets can be fun unless you’re a secret because you are who you are. Because she who she is. You’re angry at the world for ever splitting a town like a goddamn Shakespearean tragedy and deciding what’s good or evil. Because you are never enough for anyone. Never worth it. Your mother left you and she pretends you don’t exist. Your father doesn’t love you enough to be your father, to care for you. You weren’t enough to keep your parents together. And you aren’t enough to be more than a secret. You aren’t enough to be more than a backseat love story.  _

_ And then there’s all that love you don’t know where to put. You thought it’d turn into pain and anger but it didn’t, it’s just love. For her, for every sunset, for every part of her, for every crevice she carved in your heart. You realize you centered your world around her sun the second you kissed her and now you don’t know where to go.  _

_ What to say to end of things?  _

_ You hope it isn’t the end.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I might actually make this longer than planned, feel like I’m rushing things a bit so that might happen! But here it is! Chapter 2, the beginning of the angst.


	3. Who Am I Offending Now?

_‘To Kiss in cars, in downtown bars,_

_Was all we needed,_

_You drew stars around my scars,_

_But now I’m bleeding...”_

_**Cardigan, Taylor Swift** _

His father returns on the day she leaves. Jughead doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t even think to question anything because he doesn’t want answers. The truth is never too good when it comes to his father, he learned that early on and he prefers not to know. Betty’s off somewhere in California, where her grandmother lives, according to a text she’d sent as if it’d change anything and his father is back to being passed out on the couch. 

The dark circles under his eyes are darker now than when he was happy with her. He hasn’t slept too well, sometimes he’ll cry himself to sleep over what happened, over everything that ever happened in his life and how it all crumbles just when he thinks he’s gonna be okay. All he can think of is that there shouldn’t be so much pain. How is it fair? That some get everything they want and others get nothing? Why is he the cursed one? Why is pain so long in such a fleeting life? 

For a moment there, he really thought they could do it. That they could last, love each other till the love ran out. With daydreams of Paris and sweaty afternoons wrapped up in each other, with movie nights and stolen kisses that held the promise of something, something he could never describe. She made him feel invincible, worth the love and the smiles and the laughter. 

Now it was just ash from the fire. Because of course he could never be worth it, of course he couldn’t be more than a secret. 

“Dad?” 

It’s eleven and he’d been wandering around town like a sad lonely character in a movie. He is no hero, he is no villain. Life is never black and white and so she isn’t a villain nor a hero either. But he’s angry. Because of course she was right about that too. He’s angry at the world. He’s angry at her. He’s angry at her so called friends. He’s angry at himself for letting get so close. For letting her love him, for letting himself love her so much. Perhaps it’s just too much love to fit in his seventeen years of life. 

His father doesn’t answer, there’s an empty tequila bottle in his hand. Jughead wants to be sick. He wants to be anywhere but this town, this trailer, this life. He wants to forget her. Fuck. He wants to forget every bit of her soul, every little piece she showed him and every piece of himself he gave her. He wants to forget what it feels like to be loved, because the absence of it makes him want to pick up a bottle of tequila just like his father and numb it all. 

She left a shirt in his bathroom. The tiny little bathroom where she smiled at him while undressing, confessing she’d never had sex in a shower. The logistics of it aren’t all too sexy, he supposes, but they’d laughed through it, wet and slippery and happy. And he mumbled his love for her and she’d loved him back. 

The image of the shirt on his bathroom floor leaves him frozen to his spot. It’s ridiculously pink, certainly mom approved but it’s here, so out of place in the gloomy trailer. No bright colors to be found. Just the one pink shirt on his bathroom floor, remnants of her in his life that no one could ever know about.

He can’t be here. It’s been two weeks. But he can’t be here with every knife that’s been thrown at him. His father, this trailer, Betty. He can’t, so he walks outside, quickly, gets a cigarette out and lights it, taking a drag as if he can taste some sort of anchor to the world in the nicotine. 

“Jones?” It’s Sweet Pea. His neighbor. He’s not particularly fond of him. He’s loud and brash. But he also doesn’t know him too well. 

“Yeah?” 

“We’re all going to a party, wanna come?” 

It’s so not his scene, parties of any sort are so out of his comfort zone. But he needs an out. 

It’s his first bad decision.

•

He doesn’t drink. Alcohol is still poison in his mind and he had left his father passed out on the couch, drunk as a skunk. But he smokes a joint with the lot of them. All Southside kids, save for a few. And he enjoys the way the joint manages to relax him, even around all those people. People around him are having conversations. Some about a new movie that’s out, some about politics, some about whatever but he’s not really interested, he likes the way the haziness of the room hides him. Likes the way it allows him to stop for the first time in a week. He tastes in every drag a little bit of freedom. 

It’s not enough. 

In his high, he still sees her. It’s a constant image of her eyes and her lips. It’s a primal thing to think of their days in a bed or in a car or in the bathroom at the library but his mind delivers memories he swore he couldn’t recall this morning. 

A steady supply of all things that belong to her and no longer to him. 

God, why did she have to ruin everything for him? Why does the world feel so bland and with no color now that they’ve broken each other’s hearts? Her absence leaves a gaping hole in his chest and he wonders how the world around him can move forward when he’s feeling this way? How dare people be happy when he feels so fucking broken? 

Maybe he’s just really high, maybe it’s the weed and the heartbreak and all the love he can’t get rid of, but he thinks he will never love like this again. He will never find someone that’s this much like a puzzle piece in his heart. It’s perplexing that the world has given him his greatest love when he’s so young. What is he? Some idiotic dude called Romeo falling in love with the wrong girl? Fuck that, at least he’d check that she was alive before he took the poison. 

Sweet Pea is making out with a girl somewhere to his right. There’s several other couples he doesn’t know but he could care less. The haziness is suddenly suffocating. Maybe it’s the teenage hormones and his insurmountable grief. Maybe she’s thinking if him and his soul feels grasped in her hand. 

He stands up. He knows better than to stay in a dingy basement with people he doesn’t really know. The fresh air will do him some good. 

It’s his second bad decision.

The third bad decision happens when he’s walking home. Alone. Sad and miserable and high. And thinking of Betty and all the things he wishes he could have but can’t. It’s a wicked thing. The unfathomable distance between what he wants and what he can have. 

A car pulls up to him. 

She offers him a ride. He gets in the car. He shouldn’t have. They stop in front of the Sunnyside entrance. In the morning, he won’t remember what they talked about, but he can’t exactly blame it on weed, that never happens and it’s entirely on him completely bypassing whatever she’s saying and instead, playing find the difference between her and the love of his life. 

Sabrina isn’t really sober either. 

He makes his fourth bad decision when she kisses him. She drives somewhere a little more hidden. Clothes get discarded because there’s a disgusting part of him that feels good about being wanted by someone that didn’t have the burden of having to love him. 

All he can think about is Betty when Sabrina’s body feels so different. All he can think of is how this doesn’t make any sense. How it doesn’t feel right.

But Sabrina is someone who offers temporary relief in that moment. She’d been at the party, she’d looked at him the whole night. She’s familiar, he’d been her history partner once, now he’s in her car. She wants him, shows him that with few words, no questions asked. It’s uncomplicated. Then he moans Betty’s name against Sabrina’s mouth and it’s like a shockwave cursing through him, his eyes widening. Sabrina ignores it, continues to kiss but he pulls away.

He stops it from going further. He doesn’t want this. He wants to throw up. 

Sabrina doesn’t want to hide him, she’s asking if he wants to go on a proper date. 

He says no. 

Sabrina asks if he’ll call soon, whenever he wants.

He nods. Knows he won’t. And gets out of the car. 

He takes a shower. Washes away every bit of guilt he feels. 

(It doesn’t work.) 

•

The end of summer arrives with little fanfare. He’d been wallowing in his self pity for the rest of it. When the time comes for school, he’s scared to see Betty. Absolutely mortified at the prospect of having to look her in the eye. 

“Spellman?” There’s a laugh beside his locker, perhaps his only friend, Fangs, another Southside kid in Riverdale High. 

“I’m sorry?” 

“You got laid, dude. Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“Where the fuck did you hear that?” 

“A cheerleader, she’s friends with Sabrina. Ginger, I think? Everyone knows.” 

Everyone and that includes Betty. 

He rushes to class, they have class together except when he arrives, he doesn’t see her there. In fact, she’s not his class anymore. His heart breaks a little more. There’s an urge to fix things but he’s mortified so when he sees her in the hallway, they look at each other, time moves faster than he’d like and he feels like he deserves it. 

“You going to the party?” Fangs questions when they’re walking out of school to the bikes. 

“What party?” 

“Betty Cooper, supposed to be crazy, her parents are out of town or something, so she’s throwing a party. Fucks sake, do you live under a rock, Jones?” Fangs laughs. 

“Nah, just don’t think I’d be welcome.” 

“It could be fun.” Fangs shrugs. 

He doesn’t think it will. What would he do? Hang around in a corner, looking at her living her life? Looking at all that he couldn’t have? Couldn’t keep? Hurt by the secrecy of his love, of their love? He wouldn’t want to ruin her night. But he also wants to tell her that he doesn’t know what he was thinking when he was with Sabrina, he wants to tell her that maybe he can be hers for longer if she’ll have him because being without her is too much. He wants her. Needs to talk to her, even if it’s a goodbye, he needs something to hold onto. 

But then it’s Friday, the night to Betty’s party and his father is nowhere to be found, but there is a bottle of whiskey on the kitchen, half of it and he decides that maybe he doesn’t care anymore, that what’s stopping him from drinking it is nothing more than a construct he’s built. An illusion that he’ll fail, that drinking it is failing. 

Ultimately, he remembers her belief in him. He’d get out of this town, he wouldn’t be like his father. He’d be better, stronger than that and for every doubt he has, he remembers the look on her face, how real it all felt and how despite every flaw their love might have, it’s unwavering. 

He doesn’t drink. 

But the lack of sleep gets him on his bike. He takes the shorter route and then he’s in front of the house with the red door on Elm Street, ready to do he’s not sure what yet, but there’s an impulse he needs to see through to talk to her. Some sort of pull, a magnet pulling him inside the house. 

He’s been crying. He hasn’t slept in ages. He loves her and he doesn’t know what to do with all of what that means. He feels years older with every step he takes up to the front door. The music’s loud. There’s people on her smoking, all of them with the same poison that’s killing his father. The door’s open, he walks in. The house is filled with people, but his eyes only search for her. 

•

Jughead is the reason the party is even happening. What do you do when your heart is breaking, yet no one can know? How do you react to the news that the boy you loved was with someone else while you were away? What to do when you can’t even react? Veronica says she’s moping around, becoming a lot less fun than usual so Cheryl, ever the queen of chaos, jumps at the chance of throwing her a party. It’s not as though they know the reason of her blatant lack of even an ounce of happiness, as much as she tries to push through it. Her dearest friends don’t exactly care enough to question the why, they’re annoyed but only enough to throw her a party. 

Her mom is at a conference, her father had moved out, finally deciding to get a divorce. And as much as she wishes she was sad, she’s just relieved. 

An empty house. Rich friends. Popularity. 

A full house. Lots of alcohol. Several shots later, she’s on the dance floor with Adam grinding on her. The beat and the bass of the song are enough to interrupt her thoughts. Her mind is a swirling mess of flashes of him, flashes of anger, a complete disregard for Adam and his not so great dance moves and a shameful thought of: ‘I wish I was dancing with you.’ 

And then as if she conjured him, Jughead appears before her. Just not in the way she wished for. 

Materializing in the form of a mass of black clothing, pushing Adam off of her and punching him square in the face, the quarterback stumbling backwards against the bookshelf. She stands frozen in shock, unsure how to procede. 

“That’s for vandalizing my trailer!” Jughead calls out. Thankfully, Adam is too drunk to really process it, she wouldn’t want to see the bloodbath. 

Then his eyes turn to her, she’s staring at him and forgetting to really breathe. 

“What the fuck?” She breathes out. 

“Betty-“ 

“Outside. Now!” When she barks out over the music, Jughead’s eyes are wild, his breathing labored but he still follows her out to the backyard. “I don’t know what kind of right you think you have to walk in here and punch my friend-“

“Your friend.” He scoffs. 

“Fuck you. Jesus, you really are a selfish asshole. You fuck someone else while I’m gone and you punch someone because I’m-“

“Someone who vandalized my home. Someone who bullied me as a kid-“

“It doesn’t give you any right! It does not give you any fucking right! Not when you decided we were over-“

“I decided we were over? I’m pretty sure the decision was made for me!” 

“You slept with Sabrina!” She yells. He stills, whatever tireless wheel in his mind slows and the screaming match they’d been on, turns to a silence of labored breaths, Betty’s eyes tear up as much as she had tried to be strong enough to be cold about it all, like it didn’t affect her as much. “Maybe this wasn’t what I thought it was.” 

“I didn’t sleep with her.” 

Betty doesn’t know what to think. She’d heard Sabrina in the locker room, whispering to her friend about Jughead, about them in her car but had stopped herself from listening to more details, leaving. Then Ginger was babbling on and on about how Sabrina had slept with him, giggling about how much of a poor choice it’d been. She tried to tune it out all practice. 

“We...we kissed but I stopped it. It didn’t mean anything.” 

“I don’t know what to believe, Jughead.” She murmurs quietly. And his eyes widen, stepping forward.

“No no no, Betty, you have to believe me, I was high, it was stupid. I was fucking miserable, then Dad was home and I just...I fucked up, I know I did, I know-“ 

“What do you want me to say, Jughead? It’s not gonna change anything, is it?” 

“What do you want, Betts? Just tell me what you want, what you need-“

“We’re both in the wrong.” She cuts him off. “You were right. Who were we kidding? How can a secret be a relationship? How can it be when we have all this hanging over our heads?” 

“I love you.” He says in a desperate attempt to get somewhere, to have something. 

“I love you too. But you were right. It’s not enough.” 

“Betty, please...” He steps closer, wrapping his arms around her waist and she can’t help the way her body melts into his. She fights through it, the magnetic pull he seems to have over her. “I don’t want to lose you.” 

A strangled noice escapes her, there’s tears streaming down her face. “Just go home, Jughead.”

“Betts-“

“Go home.” She pushes him off her and walks towards the house as quickly as she can, leaving him with another cut to his heart, in her backyard. 

•

The Blue and Gold is still there. And they still have to work together and the first day is the day Betty puts on her best Cooper smile, reassuring herself in the mirror that she’d be fine, as though there wasn’t a gaping wound in her chest. As though she didn’t still love him with every fiber of her being. 

She tries to ignore everything that reminds her of him, but she finds she doesn’t need to look anywhere to think of him. He’s a ghost in her bed, a breath in her neck, a brush of lips. Her dreams find him even when she tries to block it out. His name is in her diary, pages and pages dedicated to him and every feeling she’d felt with him. She had been set alight with him, she had started truly living when they kissed the first time. 

When he walks into the Blue and Gold office, leather jacket, beanie on his head and a nervous look on his face, she’s transported to the beginning of them and it feels too long ago, it feels like a lifetime ago. 

“Hi.” He murmurs softly, setting his messenger bag on his usual desk, the one they had fucked on for the first time. 

“Hey.” She breathes out, eyes crossing his fleetingly before turning back to the computer. “So...Weatherby wants us to make this whole series of articles about the football team and the cheer squad, which is honestly, a little-“

“Betty.” He murmurs her name, a pleading look on his face. 

“What?” 

“Are we just gonna pretend?” She doesn’t answer, sighing. “I don’t know how to pretend you’re just my colleague.” 

“Well, I don’t know how to be around you so if we could just focus on writing the paper that’d be great.” 

That’s how it is for a few weeks, they just work together and he desperately wants to kiss her like he had so many times before. They only discuss things related to the paper and his heart feels tighter every time he tries to steer the conversation elsewhere but gets shut down. Somehow in school there’s no mention of Jughead lunching Adam, as if it was all a figment of his imagination. 

Then she laughs at a joke he makes and there’s a moment he swears it’s all like before. They’re right back at the beginning. But this time his heart already belongs to her. 

“Can we at the very least be friends?” He questions tentatively, standing by the coffee machine Betty had snuck in. He grabs her hand. 

“You mean like Sabrina is your friend?” She yanks her hand off his grasp. 

She’s still very much mad at him. Her words are laced with venom and something else he can’t figure out. 

“I never slept with her. I’m not even friends with her. I haven’t spoken with her since.” He’s pretty sure the face he makes when she pushes him against the wall should be recorded as the most dumbfounded human expression to ever exist. 

“Did you think of me when you fucked her?” The anger, filled with something a lot more perverse, travels straight to the middle of his legs and he knows his teenage body is too hormonal to have the girl he loves, pushes up against him. “Did you think about my face when you came in her? Did you moan my name, Jughead?” Her hand starts traveling down his body, from his chest to his crotch. “What did you do to her?” 

“Nothing! Fuck, I just kissed her. Betty...” She’s undoing his belt and her lips are on his neck and he might just die right there. 

“Kiss me like you kissed her.” 

“What?” His eyes snap open. Is this really happening? 

“Kiss me like you kissed her.” She orders again and he presses her lips to hers. “Was she as good as me? Did she know what you like?” She questions, a fire in her eyes he’s never felt more. 

“Fuck, Betts. No. No one could ever compare.” She kisses him again, hungrily. 

“I’m gonna make you forget there ever was anyone else.” When she drops to her knees, any coherent thoughts he could’ve had evaporate. 

And that’s how it begins again. 

•

It’s not exactly what he wants. She’s shielding herself from him. It feels almost perverse to be the way they are now when they gave so much of themselves to each other in the past. It’s fast and desperate and his skin feels like fire most times as she hungrily kisses his mouth, his body, as if time is running out, as if the world is ending. 

Then he texts her saying his father is on another bend, somewhere upstate and she shows up at the trailer unannounced. And there’s a crack in her shield. 

“Betty?” 

“Hey.” She breathes out. “I brought Pop’s.” 

Confused, he steps aside to let her in the trailer. “Look, Betty, I’m really not in the mood for-“ 

“I’m not here for that, Jughead.” She cuts him off with a warning tone, as she sets the Pop’s takeout bag on the kitchen table. “You look miserable.” 

“Gee, thanks, Betts, just what I needed.” He scoffs, crossing his arms. She sends him a look that shuts him him down as quickly as his anger started blooming. “I’m sorry...I just...I don’t know why I let it affect me anymore. I should be used to it.” 

“Maybe I should be used to my mom tearing me down but it still hurts.” She tells him quietly. “We don’t get to choose what hurts us. It just does.” Betty shrugs. 

He feels himself be in a limbo with her. Not really understanding what anything she does means. They’ve been going back and fourth on what the boundaries between them are. What had bloomed into something with no boundaries was now like being on a tight rope. Cautious of every step. He was scared of saying the wrong thing most times, afraid he might say the wrong thing and lose whatever they have now. Because at least, he gets his fix from her even when he wishes he could just hold her. Just feel her, for a moment, regain a sense of loving her like they had in the summer. 

They sit down on the couch with their food. Jughead turns on the TV, he can’t really focus on it. Between thoughts of her and his father, he’s feeling somewhat lost, adrift with nothing anchoring him down. 

“He’s been drinking more.” He tells her quietly. “And I think...I think he’s doing other stuff too.” 

Betty’s eyes turn to him. And her shield continues to break, her expression softening, the same gaze he got used to in the summer, coming back. “I’m sorry.” She murmurs quietly, he guesses there’s really no response to what he’s told her when he doesn’t know how to react himself. 

“I’ll be fine.” 

“But you’re not.” She argues, that same fire in her eyes. “Pain makes you do...stupid things.” 

His brows furrows, he feels the moment be ruptured by annoyance. “If this is about Sabrina then I’ve told you I just-“

“It’s not about that.” She shakes her head. “I don’t care about Sabrina. I care about you and knowing you’re taking care of yourself. I know the past few weeks, we haven’t been what we were and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I pushed you away. We both made mistakes. I just...wanna be here, if you want me.” 

He eyes her face as she speaks, watching every emotion swimming in her eyes, as she truly looks at him for the first time in weeks, opening herself back up again to him, in a way he wasn’t expecting, in a way he wished for but thought he wouldn’t get to have. 

“Our secret?” He questions gently and he watches her frown. 

“Would it be enough?” Her voice is a murmur, her eyes tearing up. 

“Will it ever change?” He throws back the question. 

“If you stick around long enough, maybe it will.” She whispers. 

He doesn’t want to promise anything. He doesn’t think he can when every step they take is so uncertain, when life changes in ways you don’t expect, ways you can’t predict. People change, people grow. Maybe they’ll be different people in a few months and that’s okay. Love isn’t all about promises, sometimes it’s just the present and the moments between the rush of life that matter. Love is just love, maybe it can be enough in the quiet moments they have alone. 

Maybe he can learn to love her quietly. He’s never been the loudest person anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof that took a while my sweet little babies but it is here, finally! I will be continuing this! There will be a sequel! They will no longer be Only Seventeen! 
> 
> Tell me what you think, my dudes ❤️

**Author's Note:**

> Did this start because taylor swift dropped an album? Yes, you bet your fucking ass it did. Tell me what you think!


End file.
